Innovation is putting the obscure to work for something useful. Once the obscure is unearthed, then innovation is not far away. The Obscure Features Hypothesis approach to innovation articulates the many ways that our neural system automatically generates meaning and then constructs counter techniques to uncover what is overlooked. My data show that along the way, alternative uses more easily emerge. This technique systematically strips away the layers of preconceived uses from the object and all its parts. Describing it more generically as a floating surface 200-400 feet long does not. Calling something an iceberg generally implies hitting and sinking ships. Break each object into its parts and ask two questions: Can it broken down further? Does your description imply a use? If so, describe it more generically. This presents an enormous barrier to coming up with new ideas.Īfter studying creativity for many years, I’ve come up with a way to help break through functional fixedness, with what I call the generic parts technique. On average people overlooked 20.7 of the 32 categories (64.7%). We then classified their responses into a newly developed 32-category system of the types of features for physical objects. In one study, we had fifteen people list as many features and associations as they could for fourteen common objects (e.g., candle and broom). They ignore whole categories that are not relevant to the object’s common use (e.g., motion, symmetry, texture, and many others ). Not two-thirds of the features, but two-thirds of the types of features. My research has shown that people overlook about two-thirds of the types of features that an object possesses. Efficient for everyday life, this automatic neural response is the enemy of innovation. The result: our brain’s incredible inertia to move toward the common. If a type of feature is not important for its common use, then we are not cognizant of it. Part of the meaning of an object is getting ready to use it. When we see a common object, the motor cortex of our brain activates in anticipation of using the object in the common way. The problem is we tend to just see an object’s use, not the object itself. More mundane examples: in a pinch, people have trouble seeing that a plastic lawn chair could be used as a paddle (turn it over, grab two legs, and start rowing) or that a candle wick could be used to tie things together (scrape the wax away to free the string). Fixated on the fact that icebergs sink ships, people overlooked the size and shape of the iceberg (plus the fact that it would not sink). Many people could have climbed aboard it to find flat places to stay out of the water for the four hours before help arrived. Titanic was navigable for awhile and could have pulled aside the iceberg. Newspapers from the time estimated the size of the iceberg to be between 50-100 feet high and 200-400 feet long. For example, the people on the Titanic overlooked the possibility that the iceberg could have been their lifeboat. The most famous cognitive obstacle to innovation is functional fixedness - an idea first articulated in the 1930s by Karl Duncker - in which people tend to fixate on the common use of an object.
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